Contextual Theories of Political Support

The origins of support for democracy and its institutions are far from being clear. Cultural theories hypothesize that supportive attitudes originate from socialization processes, and, consequently, they are relatively stable over time. Modernization theories consider political support to develop outside of the political sphere, and they anticipate a decline as the result of a value change. Institutional and performance theories, in contrast, assume satisfaction and trust to be a reaction to the political context, which changes and varies across countries. This chapter follows the latter approaches, also developing conditional explanations. It distinguishes between input and output factors and focuses on the role of the institutional structure, the quality of process, economic performance and inequality in explaining cross-national and over time variation in support.